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Virtual simulation experiment, as a new teaching means and method, is widely used in the teaching of experimental courses in higher medical schools. At present, there are a series of problems in medical information courses, such as insufficient experimental teaching space, limited experimental funds, and operational restrictions in the experimental process. This paper introduces the virtual simulation experiment mode into the teaching of medical information courses, establishes a new teaching mode and assessment and evaluation system, further improves the teaching quality, and studies the teaching mode suitable for applied medical universities. This paper mainly studies the possibility of applying the virtual simulation experiment mode to medical information class courses, and compares it with the traditional teaching mode and teaching effect to explore a new idea of effectively improving students' innovation and practice ability.

The climatic and environmental characteristics of the Holocene are much debated, especially the occurrence of a climatic optimum in the mid-Holocene and the interactions between human civilization and the environment. Knowledge of the Holocene climatic evolution of the Mu Us Sandy Land in North China is important for understanding the cultural development of northern Shaanxi. However, few continuous and high-resolution lake sedimentary records are available from the region. We selected Lake Gouchi, a climatically sensitive site in the Mu Us Sandy Land, for a study of sedimentary organic indicators such as n-alkanes, with the objective of reconstructing the regional climatic history since the mid-Holocene. Our results indicate that during 8130–4500 BP, the regional climate was relatively warm and humid, the terrestrial vegetation was dominated by woody plants, and the nutrient level of the lake was relatively stable. Then the climate gradually became arid. However, at the beginning of 2500 BP, there was an 800-year period of warm and humid conditions. Entering the historical period there was an increase in the environmental impacts of human activities. Overall, the climate of the Gouchi area was influenced by the response of the East Asian summer monsoon to changes in Northern Hemisphere summer insolation, which were responsible for the mid-Holocene Maximum. Comparison of the climatic record of Lake Gouchi with the sequence of cultural evolution in northern Shaanxi reveals a distinct relationship. Favorable climatic conditions were associated with technological development, an increasing population, and a flourishing civilization; whereas less favorable climatic conditions were associated with cultural stagnation or decline.

This paper presents an output control for a manipulator by changing the spring stiffness. Through the modeling and analysis of the nonlinear stiffness characteristics of the crank-rocker mechanism, and using the zero stiffness domain search method to select the appropriate spring stiffness, using different spring stiffness to establish different mechanism models, the robot can finally control the output of ideal constant force, and at the same time, the analysis results are applied to the improved design of the tire grabbing manipulator. Through this method, the tire grabbing manipulator becomes a constant grabbing force mechanism, and the mechanism is transformed from a rigid-body mechanism to a pseudo-rigid-body mechanism. The accuracy and stability of the whole system are greatly improved. In this study, the method of adding spring to each joint of the linkage mechanism is applied to the improvement design of the linkage mechanism, and the four-bar constant force mechanism is designed for the first time, which expands the application field of the nonlinear stiffness characteristics of the linkage mechanism, and has great application value to the improvement design of the mechanical system with the linkage mechanism and the control of the output force.

Objectives: This study mainly discusses the developing status in the field of health policy in recent two decades to provide an effective reference for researchers.Methods: Health policy publications published in Web of Science between 2011 to 2020 were searched, screened, organized, and analyzed the yearly-outputs, research author, institution, regional distribution, keywords, subject categories, and so on.Results: The total number of publications in health policy has shown a trend of upward in the past twenty years. Health policy was identified as the most productive journal. The research of United States takes the lead in this field. Health care, public health, epidemiology, children, and quality of life will likely to take a dominant position in future research.Conclusion: The field of health policy has developed a stable research community with good partnerships, and the high-impact authors lead the development of the discipline. The hotspots of health policy research are constantly updated with the trend of social development and have strong timeliness. With constantly study, health policy has become a relatively mature research topic, but it doesn't mean the termination of the study. It remains to be properly explored and improved to protect people’s health and promote the quality of life in the future.

Global warming is having a profound influence on vegetation and biodiversity patterns, especially in alpine areas and high latitudes. The Qinling Mountain range is located in the transition zone between the temperate and subtropical ecosystems of central–east China and thus the vegetation of the area is diverse. Understanding the long-term interactions between plant diversity and climate change can potentially provide a reference for future landscape management and biodiversity conservation strategies in the Qinling Mountains region. Here, we use a pollen record from the Holocene sediments of Daye Lake, on Mount Taibai in the Qingling Mountains, to study regional vegetation changes based on biomes reconstruction and diversity analysis. Temperature and precipitation records from sites close to Daye Lake are used to provide environmental background to help determine the vegetation response to climate change. The results indicate that climate change was the main factor influencing vegetation and palynological diversity in the Qinling Mountains during the Holocene. The cold and dry climate at the beginning of the early Holocene (11,700–10,700 cal yr BP) resulted in a low abundance and uneven distribution of regional vegetation types, with the dominance of coniferous forest. During the early Holocene (10,700–7,000 cal yr BP), temperate deciduous broadleaf forest expanded, palynological diversity and evenness increased, indicating that the warm and humid climate promoted vegetation growth. In the middle Holocene (7,000–3,000 cal yr BP), the climate became slightly drier but a relatively warm environment supported the continued increase in palynological diversity. After ∼3,000 cal yr BP, palynological diversity and the evenness index commenced a decreasing trend, in agreement with the decreased temperature and precipitation in the Qinling Mountains. It’s noteworthy that human activity at this time had a potential influence on the vegetation. During the past few centuries, however, palynological diversity has increased along with the global temperature, and therefore it is possible that in the short-term ongoing climatic warming will promote vegetation development and palynological diversity in the area without human interference.

Advances in next-generation sequencing technologies are changing the ways cancer diagnosis and treatment, which leads to a new branch of precision medicine: "Precision Oncology". This study aims to deliver a structured overview to carry out a bibliometric analysis of precision oncology research over the past 10 years retrospectively.Bibliometric methods including clustering analysis and co-occurrence visualized study were conducted based on publications of academic databases Web of Science Main Collection from 1st January 2012, to 31st December 2021. This study analyzed the information about related research outputs, countries, institutions, authors, cited papers, and hot topics.7163 papers related to precision oncology were identified. Since 2014, the number of articles has proliferated, and oncology precision has attracted significant attention from scholars worldwide in recent years. The USA leads the research in this field, and the League of European Research Universities is the primary research institution. Research institutions from Asia paid more attention to this field through high-level international cooperation. Besides, there are still many issues expected to be explored and evaluated correctly. Such as the considerable uncertainty that pharmacogenomic methods have no significant influence on patient outcomes.Precision oncology serves as an essential method in clinical treatment, and is closely related to biological study, including biochemistry, molecular and genetics, advanced technology, and pharmacology discovery. The future research prospect would be the broad involvement of social participation and global cooperation in oncology precision research to acquire better results via the balance of technology and public health policy.

Furin is a proprotein convertase that regulates the activation and the inactivation of multiple proteins including matrix metalloproteinases, integrins, and cytokines. It is a serine endoprotease that localizes to the plasma membrane and can be secreted into the extracellular space. The role of furin in regulating inflammation in isolated canine airway smooth muscle tissues was investigated. The treatment of airway tissues with recombinant furin (rFurin) inhibited the activation of Akt and eotaxin secretion induced by IL-13, and it prevented the IL-13-induced suppression of smooth muscle myosin heavy chain expression. rFurin promoted a differentiated phenotype by activating β1-integrin proteins and stimulating the activation of the adhesome proteins vinculin and paxillin by talin. Activated paxillin induced the binding of Akt to β-parvin IPP [integrin-linked kinase (ILK), PINCH, parvin] complexes, which inhibits Akt activation. Treatment of tissues with a furin inhibitor or the depletion of endogenous furin using shRNA resulted in Akt activation and inflammatory responses similar to those induced by IL-13. Furin inactivation or IL-13 caused talin cleavage and integrin inactivation, resulting in the inactivation of vinculin and paxillin. Paxillin inactivation resulted in the coupling of Akt to α-parvin IPP complexes, which catalyze Akt activation and an inflammatory response. The results demonstrate that furin inhibits inflammation in airway smooth muscle induced by IL-13 and that the anti-inflammatory effects of furin are mediated by activating integrin proteins and integrin-associated signaling complexes that regulate Akt-mediated pathways to the nucleus. Furin may have therapeutic potential for the treatment of inflammatory conditions of the lungs and airways.

Mechanical tension and humoral stimuli can induce transitions in airway smooth muscle phenotype between a synthetic inflammatory state that promotes cytokine secretion and a differentiated state that promotes the expression of smooth muscle phenotype-specific proteins. When tissues are maintained under high tension, Akt activation and eotaxin secretion are suppressed, but expression of the differentiation marker protein, smooth muscle myosin heavy chain (SmMHC), is promoted. When tissues are maintained under low tension, Akt activation and eotaxin secretion are stimulated, and the differentiated phenotype is suppressed. We hypothesized that mechanical stimuli are differentially transduced to Akt-mediated signaling pathways that regulate phenotype expression by α-parvin and β-parvin integrin-linked kinase/PINCH/parvin (IPP) signaling complexes within integrin adhesomes. High tension or ACh triggered paxillin phosphorylation and the binding of phospho-paxillin to β-parvin IPP complexes. This inhibited Akt activation and promoted SmMHC expression. Low tension or IL-4 did not elicit paxillin phosphorylation and triggered the binding of unphosphorylated paxillin to α-parvin IPP complexes, which promoted Akt activation and eotaxin secretion and suppressed SmMHC expression. Expression of a nonphosphorylatable paxillin mutant or β-parvin depletion by siRNA promoted the inflammatory phenotype, whereas the depletion of α-parvin promoted the differentiated phenotype. Results demonstrate that phenotype expression is regulated by the differential interaction of phosphorylated and unphosphorylated paxillin with α-parvin and β-parvin IPP complexes and that these complexes have opposite effects on the activation of Akt. Our results describe a novel molecular mechanism for transduction of mechanical and humoral stimuli within integrin signaling complexes to regulate phenotype expression in airway smooth muscle.

This paper presents a method for simulating surface crack patterns appearing in ceramic glaze, glass, wood and mud. It uses a physically and heuristically combined method to model this type of crack pattern. A stress field is defined heuristically over the triangle mesh of an object. Then, a first-order quasi-static cracking node method (CNM) is used to model deformation. A novel combined stress and energy combined crack criterion is employed to address crack initiation and propagation separately according to physics. Meanwhile, a highest-stress-first rule is applied in crack initiation, and a breadth-first rule is applied in crack propagation. Finally, a local stress relaxation step is employed to evolve the stress field and avoid shattering artifacts. Other related issues are also discussed, such as the elimination of quadrature sub-cells, the prevention of parallel cracks and spurious crack procession. Using this method, a variety of crack patterns observed in the real world can be reproduced by changing a set of parameters. Consequently, our method is robust because the computational mesh is independent of dynamic cracks and has no sliver elements. We evaluate the realism of our results by comparing them with photographs of real-world examples. Further, we demonstrate the controllability of our method by varying different parameters.

One of the major challenges in mesh-based deformation simulation in computer graphics is to deal with mesh distortion. In this paper, we present a novel mesh-insensitive and softer method for simulating deformable solid bodies under the assumptions of linear elastic mechanics. A face-based strain smoothing method is adopted to alleviate mesh distortion instead of the traditional spatial adaptive smoothing method. Then, we propose a way to combine the strain smoothing method and the corotational method. With this approach, the amplitude and frequency of transient displacements are slightly affected by the distorted mesh. Realistic simulation results are generated under large rotation using a linear elasticity model without adding significant complexity or computational cost to the standard corotational FEM. Meanwhile, softening effect is a by-product of our method.

Smart campus is an inevitable trend in the development of digital campus construction. With the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Virtual Reality (VR) technology, these technologies become the key to the construction of smart campus. The major objective of this study put forward a smart campus system prototype based on Internet technology. This paper firstly introduces the definition and characteristics of the IoT and VR technology. Secondly, presents the architecture and implementation methodology of the system prototype, and analyzes the core idea of smart campus. Finally, discuss the problems should be noticed in the smart campus construction.

Mass customization has become a major trend for the manufacturing sector today, as it enables companies to produce customized products that meet customers' individual requirements at mass production rate. Product configuration tool is an integral part of the manufacturing service system that has been recognized as the key enabler to achieve mass customization. Although intensively studied in the literature, the application of the product configuration is still in the initial stage, due to the lack of systematic modeling and efficient configuration approach. Heterogeneous product information in configuration has to be effectively managed. In this thesis, firstly we give an intensive study on the state-of-the-art computer-aided product configuration methodologies. The advantages and limitations of existing approaches are evaluated. Constraint-based approach is proposed to model and solve product configuration problem. It is based on Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) paradigm, where problem is modeled into variables, domains and constraints. Based on the approach, a systematic product configuration system framework is then defined. Novel product data model and knowledge representation model are designed and developed to capture the domain problem. Moreover, to address the limitation of the manual knowledge acquisition approach for knowledge-based configuration system, a novel machine learning approach which deploys association rule mining technique is proposed and implemented to achieve automatic product configuration knowledge generation. A product configuration software system is developed to implement the constraint-based configuration approach proposed, which demonstrates the significance of our modeling and reasoning approach. Constraint-based configuration is proven to be an effective and efficient approach. To further enhance our approach, the system is extended to take cost as design criteria. A cost model that provides cost assessment for whole product life cyle has been developed. A system module is developed and integrated with the configuration system to provide cost estimation capability, which is a significant value-add for practical product configuration application. MASTER OF ENGINEERING (SCE)

The aim of this study is to conduct a retrospective bibliometric analysis of articles about rehabilitation medicine using virtual reality technology. Bibliometrics is one subfield of scientometric. It is an effective tool for evaluating research trends in different science fields. A systematic bibliometric search was performed using three academic databases (PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science) between January 1, 1996, and December 31, 2015. Research outputs, countries, institutions, authors, major journals, cited articles, subject area and hot research topics were analyzed to base on bibliometrics methodologies. The retrieval of results was analyzed and described in the form of texts, tables, and graphics. Total of 15,191 articles were identified from three academic databases; and from them 48.32 % published as original articles. The articles were originated from 101 countries and territories. United States was ranked first with 4522 articles, and United Kingdom was on second with 1369 articles. 96.75 % of the articles are published in English. 527 articles were published by the Lecture Notes In Computer Science Including Subseries Lecture Notes In Artificial Intelligence And Lecture Notes In Bioinformatics. With regard of the research institutions, Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich published 208 articles ranked first. In the past 20 years, the research outcome of rehabilitation using virtual reality technology research has increased substantially. This study provides a valuable reference for researchers to understand the overview and present situations in this field.

Key points In airway smooth muscle, tension development caused by a contractile stimulus requires phosphorylation of the 20 kDa myosin light chain (MLC), which activates crossbridge cycling and the polymerization of a pool of submembraneous actin. The p21-activated kinases (Paks) can regulate the contractility of smooth muscle and non-muscle cells, and there is evidence that this occurs through the regulation of MLC phosphorylation. We show that Pak has no effect on MLC phosphorylation during the contraction of airway smooth muscle, and that it regulates contraction by mediating actin polymerization. We find that Pak phosphorylates the adhesion junction protein, paxillin, on Ser273, which promotes the formation of a signalling complex that activates the small GTPase, cdc42, and the actin polymerization catalyst, neuronal Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome protein (N-WASP). These studies demonstrate a novel role for Pak in regulating the contractility of smooth muscle by regulating actin polymerization. Abstract The p21-activated kinases (Pak) can regulate contractility in smooth muscle and other cell and tissue types, but the mechanisms by which Paks regulate cell contractility are unclear. In airway smooth muscle, stimulus-induced contraction requires phosphorylation of the 20 kDa light chain of myosin, which activates crossbridge cycling, as well as the polymerization of a small pool of actin. The role of Pak in airway smooth muscle contraction was evaluated by inhibiting acetylcholine (ACh)-induced Pak activation through the expression of a kinase inactive mutant, Pak1 K299R, or by treating tissues with the Pak inhibitor, IPA3. Pak inhibition suppressed actin polymerization and contraction in response to ACh, but it did not affect myosin light chain phosphorylation. Pak activation induced paxillin phosphorylation on Ser273; the paxillin mutant, paxillin S273A, inhibited paxillin Ser273 phosphorylation and inhibited actin polymerization and contraction. Immunoprecipitation analysis of tissue extracts and proximity ligation assays in dissociated cells showed that Pak activation and paxillin Ser273 phosphorylation triggered the formation of an adhesion junction signalling complex with paxillin that included G-protein-coupled receptor kinase-interacting protein (GIT1) and the cdc42 guanine exchange factor, βPIX (Pak interactive exchange factor). Assembly of the Pak-GIT1-βPIX-paxillin complex was necessary for cdc42 and neuronal Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome protein (N-WASP) activation, actin polymerization and contraction in response to ACh. RhoA activation was also required for the recruitment of Pak to adhesion junctions, Pak activation, paxillin Ser273 phosphorylation and paxillin complex assembly. These studies demonstrate a novel role for Pak in the regulation of N-WASP activation, actin dynamics and cell contractility.

Craniofacial reconstruction recreates a facial outlook from the cranium based on the relationship between the face and the skull to assist identification. But craniofacial structures are very complex, and this relationship is not the same in different craniofacial regions. Several regional methods have recently been proposed, these methods segmented the face and skull into regions, and the relationship of each region is then learned independently, after that, facial regions for a given skull are estimated and finally glued together to generate a face. Most of these regional methods use vertex coordinates to represent the regions, and they define a uniform coordinate system for all of the regions. Consequently, the inconsistence in the positions of regions between different individuals is not eliminated before learning the relationships between the face and skull regions, and this reduces the accuracy of the craniofacial reconstruction. In order to solve this problem, an improved regional method is proposed in this paper involving two types of coordinate adjustments. One is the global coordinate adjustment performed on the skulls and faces with the purpose to eliminate the inconsistence of position and pose of the heads; the other is the local coordinate adjustment performed on the skull and face regions with the purpose to eliminate the inconsistence of position of these regions. After these two coordinate adjustments, partial least squares regression (PLSR) is used to estimate the relationship between the face region and the skull region. In order to obtain a more accurate reconstruction, a new fusion strategy is also proposed in the paper to maintain the reconstructed feature regions when gluing the facial regions together. This is based on the observation that the feature regions usually have less reconstruction errors compared to rest of the face. The results demonstrate that the coordinate adjustments and the new fusion strategy can significantly improve the craniofacial reconstructions.

In recent years, with the abrupt growth of the amount of biomedical literature, a lot of implicit laws and new knowledge were buried in the vast literature, while the text mining technology, if applied in the biomedical field, can integrate and analyze massive biomedical literature data, obtaining valuable information to improve people’s understanding of biomedical phenomena. This paper mainly discussed the research status of text mining technology applied in the biomedical field in recent 10 years in order to provide a reference for further studies of other researchers. Biomedical text mining literature included in SCI from 2004 to 2013 were retrieved and filtered and then were analyzed from the perspectives of annual changes, regional distribution, research institutions, journals sources, research fields, keywords and so on. The total amount of global biomedical text mining literature is on the rise, among which literature relevant to named entity recognition, entity relation extraction, text categorization, text clustering, abbreviations extraction and co-occurrence analysis take up a large percentage; studies in USA and the UK are in the leading position. Compared with other much more mature research topics, the application of text mining technology in biomedicine is still a relatively new research field worldwide, while with the constantly improving awareness of this field and deepening researches in this area, a number of core research areas, core research institutes and core research fields have been formed in this field. Therefore, further researches of this field will inject new vitality in the development of biomedicine.

The aim of this study is to conduct a retrospective bibliometric analysis of articles about traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) research in PubMed and to learn about the development and perspective of TCM. A systematic bibliometric search was performed based on the PubMed database covering related publications between January 1, 1995, and December 31, 2014. Numbers and type of articles, countries and language of publications, as well as major journals were analyzed in accordance with bibliometrics methodologies. The retrieve results were analyzed and described in the form of texts, tables, and graphs. A total of 42,192 articles were identified from the PubMed database, among which 43.56 % were published as original articles. The articles were originated from 102 countries and territories. China was ranked first with 20,121 articles, followed by United States with 2207 articles. 57.74 % of the articles are published in English. 4364 articles were published by Zhongguo Zhong Yao Za Zhi. And complementary medicine was the most focused research are involving 30,544 articles. The publication activity of TCM literature increased rapidly in the past 20 years, indicating enhanced attention attracted to TCM and more research input. In view of its great advances achieved in scientific studies, TCM will continue to play an important role in medical research.

The exercise of siting environmentally stigmatized infrastructure projects, like waste incineration power plants, albeit socially desirable, is full of challenges partially due to local opposition. The strategies for enhancing public acceptance are therefore critical to building waste incineration projects. This study aims to investigate public attitudes towards waste incineration projects in China and to make recommendations for enhancing public acceptance. A comparative case study was undertaken where two waste incineration projects (i.e., one succeeded and one failed) were examined. Data were collected through questionnaire-survey, complemented by archive files and face-to-face interviews. The results show over 70% respondents, although support waste incinerators in general, hope that the project will not sit in the vicinity of their residential areas. A successful project siting strategy should take account of environmental, social and economic impacts systematically. To alleviate the environmental concern, it would be helpful to improve road conditions, adopt stringent standard of the odor emissions and monitor the power plant operation closely. The strategies used to cope with social aspect comprise effective communication between the government agency and the host community, active engagement of the public in decision-making and government's readiness for and flexibility in problem-solving. The results also indicate that a fair re-settlement plan and transparency in the implementation of the compensation plan are conducive to lessening the interest conflicts. This study contributes to the knowledge of waste incineration project management by identifying the critical strategies for managing sitting problems of waste incinerators. Recommendations for increasing public acceptance are offered.

Recent studies have demonstrated a novel molecular mechanism for the regulation of airway smooth muscle (ASM) contraction by RhoA GTPase. In ASM tissues, both myosin light chain (MLC) phosphorylation and actin polymerization are required for active tension generation. RhoA inactivation dramatically suppresses agonist-induced tension development and completely inhibits agonist-induced actin polymerization, but only slightly reduces MLC phosphorylation. The inhibition of MLC phosphatase does not reverse the effects of RhoA inactivation on contraction or actin polymerization. Thus, RhoA regulates ASM contraction through its effects on actin polymerization rather than MLC phosphorylation. Contractile stimulation of ASM induces the recruitment and assembly of paxillin, vinculin, and focal adhesion kinase (FAK) into membrane adhesion complexes (adhesomes) that regulate actin polymerization by catalyzing the activation of cdc42 GTPase by the G-protein-coupled receptor kinase-interacting target (GIT) – p21-activated kinase (PAK) – PAK-interacting exchange factor (PIX) complex. Cdc42 is a necessary and specific activator of the actin filament nucleation activator, N-WASp. The recruitment and activation of paxillin, vinculin, and FAK is prevented by RhoA inactivation, thus preventing cdc42 and N-WASp activation. We conclude that RhoA regulates ASM contraction by catalyzing the assembly and activation of membrane adhesome signaling modules that regulate actin polymerization, and that the RhoA-mediated assembly of adhesome complexes is a fundamental step in the signal transduction process in response to a contractile agonist.

Objective: This research focused on intrinsic biological distinctions between qi deficiency pattern and qi stagnation pattern with genes related to NEI. Methods: Using the keywords related to a disease to search literature in Pubmed. Collection and download literature related to a disease. Obtain compositions of characteristic NEI-related genes of qi deficiency pattern and qi stagnation pattern by using text-mining method to explore different bioactive materials between the two syndromes. Results: Two kinds of syndromes and their biological networks were constructed. The "qi deficiency" and "qi stagnation" genes based on NEI network were excavated. Conclusion: The genes of qi stagnation pattern relate closely with nerve and endocrine, while those of qi deficiency pattern have a close relationship with the immune system. The intrinsic biological characterizations of TCM patterns can be effectively identified at the level of NEI.

The objective of this review article is to explain the factors responsible for damaged mitochondria and its association with Alzheimer?s disease. Alzheimer?s disease (AD) is fairly produced by dysfunctional mitochondria that are alternatively caused by excessive reactive oxygen species and mitochondrial dynamic imbalance. In the pathogenesis of AD, there is important role of many factors including amyloid-beta peptide (A ), tau-proteins, and mutations in presenilin-1. Additionally, mitochondrial-targeted antioxidants have also been explained because of their significance to mitochondrial alterations in AD. Moreover, alteration in mitochondrial dynamics is responsible for the generation of segregated, damaged mitochondria that are, later on, destroyed through mitochondrial autophagy in AD. Finally, various novel models used for studying Alzheimer?s disease, have been discussed.

Chinese ancient architecture is well known for its unique shape styles and complex constructions, which results in a complicated 3D modeling process. In contrast to the existing procedural modeling method which generates architectures relying on fixed rules, our data-driven approach aggregate information from 3D model collections to realize analysis, inference and synthesis of components spontaneously. For proprietary properties of ancient building models, this paper describes the framework of the complete procedure from shape representation to component assembly. The plausible combinations for structural components are also learned from 3D model dataset by the Bayesian network. As a periodic research, some remaining works at each stage are proposed in this paper. We conclude these works with ideas that can inspire future research in the modeling issue for Chinese ancient architecture.

FEM-based elasticity models are popular in solid body simulation. To avoid its problems of mesh sensitivity and overly stiff, a novel smoothed pseudo-linear elasticity model is presented. First, the smoothed finite element method is employed to alleviate mesh distortion and overly stiff problems instead of the traditional spatial adaptive smoothing method. Then, we propose a smoothing domain-based stiffness warping technique to compensate the nonlinear errors introduced by linear elasticity models. With this approach, transient displacements are slightly affected by mesh distortion and total volumes are preserved under large rotations. It also shows apparently softening effects in the experiments. Simulation results are generated without adding significant complexity or computational cost to the standard corotational FEM.

As a fundamental infrastructure to sustain human activities and development, urban wastewater systems are becoming more and more important in the context of population growth and business expansion. It is important to analyze and assess environmental impacts of these systems to community development. This paper presents a model developed for estimating carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions resulting from urban wastewater systems addressing both construction and operational activities. Construction emissions are divided into three categories: material manufacture, material transportation, and pipe installation. Operational emissions include the following: energy consumption–related emissions and wastewater treatment–related emissions. Emission factors of gasoline, diesel oil, and electricity were calculated. The model was demonstrated by applying it to the wastewater system in the city of Suzhou, China, to quantify CO2e emissions for the period of 2005–2010. The results highlight the high prop...

The development of science and technology had brought about many changes in life of human being. Research of Virtual Reality (VR) technology has already made important progress in the world. It is widely used in military, industrial development and education. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a valuable asset in China. The development of the education of TCM is very important. Keeping in view the development of TCM in the field of education this paper has been written on TCM visualisation education platform based on Virtual Reality (VR) technology. We focused on the idea, platform structure and implementation on method of this system.

The effects of mechanical forces and focal adhesion kinase (FAK) in regulating the inflammatory responses of airway smooth muscle (ASM) tissues to stimulation with interleukin (IL)-13 were investigated. Canine tracheal tissues were subjected to different mechanical loads in vitro, and the effects of mechanical load on eotaxin secretion and inflammatory signaling pathways in response to IL-13 were determined. Eotaxin secretion by tissues in response to IL-13 was significantly inhibited in muscles maintained at a higher (+) load compared with those at a lower (−) load as assessed by ELISA, and Akt activation was also reduced in the higher (+) loaded tissues. Conversely the (+) mechanical load increased activation of the focal adhesion proteins FAK and paxillin in the tissues. The role of FAK in regulating the mechanosensitive responses was assessed by overexpressing FAK-related nonkinase in the tissues, by expressing the FAK kinase-dead mutant FAK Y397F, or by treating tissues with the FAK inhibitor PF-573228. FAK inactivation potentiated Akt activity and increased eotaxin secretion in response to IL-13. FAK inhibition also suppressed the mechanosensitivity of Akt activation and eotaxin secretion. In addition, FAK inactivation suppressed smooth muscle myosin heavy chain expression induced by the higher (+) mechanical load. The results demonstrate that the imposition of a higher mechanical load on airway smooth muscle stimulates FAK activation, which promotes the expression of the differentiated contractile phenotype and suppresses the synthetic phenotype and the inflammatory responses of the muscle tissue.

While various methodologies for quantifying carbon emissions of pavement construction are developed worldwide, adopting and promoting the existing tools to China’s market is found fairly challenging due to institutional constraints. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to propose a methodology for measuring carbon emissions of pavement construction compatible with the fixed pricing systems prevalent in China; and develop an automatic tool for carbon estimations. The total carbon emissions are measured by aggregating emissions of energy consumption and materials used along with four stages, namely material manufacture, transportation, construction, and disposal. A set of composite carbon emission factors for energy and materials was calculated based on existing emission factors with the consideration of the boundaries concerned. The quantity of energy and materials used in pavement construction are obtained through bills of quantity and the fixed price system. The database of the emission factors for energy and materials was embedded into a C# based tool, and validated in a real case.

Background: The aims of this study are to evaluate and summarize the scientific production in the field of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) treatment of cardiovascular disease (CVD).Methods: A systematic bibliometric search was performed based on the PubMed database covering relative publications between January 1, 1995, and December 31, 2014. Core of the search strategy include the key word cardiovascular disease and the Medical Subject Heading Chinese herbal medicine. The number, type, country, major journals, and research focus of articles were analyzed in accordance with bibliometrics methodologies.Results: The retrieve results were analyzed and described in the form of texts, tables, and graphs. A total of 3,826 articles were identified, 40.28% of which were original articles. All articles were from 50 countries/territories. China was ranked first with 2,258 articles, followed by Japan with 173 articles. 665 articles were published by Zhongguo Zhong Xi Yi Jie He Za Zhi.Conclusion: The publication activity of literature has grown rapidly in the past 20 years, indicating enhanced attention and increasing research input to CHM treatment of CVD. Owing to its great advances in scientific studies, CHM will continue to play an important role in medical research.Key words: bibliometrics analysis; cardiovascular disease; Chinese herbal medicine; research trends

The activation of the small GTPase RhoA is necessary for ACh-induced actin polymerization and airway smooth muscle (ASM) contraction, but the mechanism by which it regulates these events is unknown. Actin polymerization in ASM is catalyzed by the actin filament nucleation activator, N-WASp and the polymerization catalyst, Arp2/3 complex. Activation of the small GTPase cdc42, a specific N-WASp activator, is also required for actin polymerization and tension generation. We assessed the mechanism by which RhoA regulates actin dynamics and smooth muscle contraction by expressing the dominant negative mutants RhoA T19N and cdc42 T17N, and non-phosphorylatable paxillin Y118/31F and paxillin ΔLD4 deletion mutants in SM tissues. Their effects were evaluated in muscle tissue extracts and freshly dissociated SM cells. Protein interactions and cellular localization were analyzed using proximity ligation assays (PLA), immunofluorescence, and GTPase and kinase assays. RhoA inhibition prevented ACh-induced cdc42 activation, N-WASp activation and the interaction of N-WASp with the Arp2/3 complex at the cell membrane. ACh induced paxillin phosphorylation and its association with the cdc42 GEFS, DOCK180 and α/βPIX. Paxillin tyrosine phosphorylation and its association with βPIX were RhoA-dependent, and were required for cdc42 activation. The ACh-induced recruitment of paxillin and FAK to the cell membrane was dependent on RhoA. We conclude that RhoA regulates the contraction of ASM by catalyzing the assembly and activation of cytoskeletal signaling modules at membrane adhesomes that initiate signaling cascades that regulate actin polymerization and tension development in response to contractile agonist stimulation. Our results suggest that the RhoA-mediated assembly of adhesome complexes is a fundamental step in the signal transduction process in response to agonist -induced smooth muscle contraction.

The aim of this study was to manage diabetes with medicinal plants (Gymnema sylvestre, Artemisia absinthium and Citillus colocynthis) in human patients with type II diabetes. Thirty two patients of type II diabetes from both sexes of 30-60 years age were registered for this study and distributed them into four groups, each having 8 patients. Capsules of each, Gymnema sylvestre, Artemisia absinthium and Citrullus colocynthis were given to patients twice a day for 30 days in 1 g per day dosage and investigated for glucose, triglyceride (TGL) and cholesterol level. Gymnema sylvestre reduced 37% glucose, 5% TGL, 13% cholesterol and 19% low desity lipoproteins (LDL) level in diabetic individuals. Citrullus colocynth reduced glucose, cholesterol and TGL and HDL-cholesterol level by 35, 6, 6, and 5%, respectively. Artemisia absinthium reduced 3% high desity lipoproteins (HDL) and 6% LDL level. From results, it can be concluded that the powdered Gymnema sylvestre, Citrulus colocynthis, and Artemisia absinthium possess good anti-diabetic features, however these herbal products had no significant effect on lipid profiles of the diabetic human.

Vinculin localizes to membrane adhesion junctions where it links actin filaments to the extracellular matrix by binding to the integrin-binding protein talin at its head domain (Vh) and to actin filaments at its tail domain (Vt). Vinculin can assume an inactive (closed) conformation in which Vh and Vt bind to each other, masking the binding sites for actin and talin, and an active (open) conformation in which the binding sites for talin and actin are exposed. We hypothesized that the contractile activation of smooth muscle tissues might regulate the activation of vinculin and thereby contribute to the regulation of contractile tension. Stimulation of tracheal smooth muscle tissues with acetylcholine (ACh) induced the recruitment of vinculin to cell membrane and its interaction with talin and increased the phosphorylation of membrane-localized vinculin at the C-terminal Tyr-1065. Expression of recombinant vinculin head domain peptide (Vh) in smooth muscle tissues, but not the talin-binding deficient mutant head domain, VhA50I, inhibited the ACh-induced recruitment of endogenous vinculin to the membrane and the interaction of vinculin with talin and also inhibited vinculin phosphorylation. Expression of Vh peptide also inhibited ACh-induced smooth muscle contraction and inhibited ACh-induced actin polymerization; however, it did not affect myosin light chain phosphorylation, which is necessary for cross-bridge cycling. Inactivation of RhoA inhibited vinculin activation in response to ACh. We conclude that ACh stimulation regulates vinculin activation in tracheal smooth muscle via RhoA and that vinculin activation contributes to the regulation of active tension by facilitating connections between actin filaments and talin-integrin adhesion complexes and by mediating the initiation of actin polymerization.

Dam projects are inevitably accompanied by massive displacement and resettlement, which imposes intricate social impacts on the host community. This study aims to investigate the social impacts of dam-induced displacement and resettlement in China through a comparative case study where both the control and experimental groups were investigated. Data were collected through a mix of questionnaire-survey, archival files, and face-to-face interviews. The results show that dam-induced displacement and resettlement was conducive to improving residence conditions and facilitating the acceptance of rural cooperative medical insurance. But it had negative impacts on employment, income level and income resource, and overall well-being. Implications for theory and for practice are provided in the end.

PurposeProduct configuration is considered as one of the most successful applications of knowledge‐based approaches in the past decade. Knowledge‐based configurations can be classified into three different approaches, namely, rule‐based, model‐based and case‐based approaches. Past research has mainly focused on the development of reasoning techniques for mapping requirements to configurations. Despite the success of certain conventional approaches, the acquisition of configuration knowledge is usually done manually. This paper aims to explore fundamental issues in product configuration system, and propose a novel approach based on data mining techniques to automatically discover configuration knowledge in constraint‐based configurations.Design/methodology/approachGiven a set of product data comprising product requirements specification and configuration information, the paper adopted an association rule mining algorithm to discover useful patterns between requirement specification and product components, as well as the correlation among product components. A configuration was developed which takes XML‐based requirement specification as input and bases on a constraint knowledge base to produce product configuration as output consisting of a list of selected components and the structure and topology of the product. Three modules are developed, namely product data modelling, configuration knowledge generation and product configuration generation module. The proposed approach is implemented in the configuration knowledge generation module. The configuration generation module realizes a resolution of constraint satisfaction problem to generate the output configuration.FindingsThe significance and effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by its incorporation in our configuration system prototype. A case study was conducted and experimental results show that the approach is promising in finding constraints with given sufficient data.Originality/valueNovel knowledge generation approach is proposed to assist constraint generation for Constraint‐based product configuration system.

Vascular remodeling is closely related to hypertension, atherosclerosis, and restenosis after PCI. Considerable evidence indicates that the activation and proliferation of adventitial fibroblasts play key roles in vessel injury. The inflammatory response and high expression of connexins contribute to adventitial remodeling. Therefore, reducing inflammation reaction and connexins expression in adventitia may become a new target to prevent vascular remodeling. Yiqihuoxuejiedu formula, composed of TCM therapeutic principle of supplementing qi, activating blood and detoxification, can inhibit restenosis after intimal injury. To further investigate the effect of Yiqihuoxuejiedu formula on inflammation and connexins, we established a carotid artery injury model. In model rats, hyperplasia in the intima was mild but obvious in the adventitia; CRP heightened; expressions of MCP-1, CD68, and Cx43 increased. Yiqihuoxuejiedu formula relieved intimal hyperplasia and adventitial area, obviously diminished the expressions of CD68 and Cx43 in the adventitia, and reduced CRP but did not lower MCP-1. These results indicated that Yiqihuoxuejiedu formula inhibited vascular remodeling especially adventitial hyperplasia by reducing the inflammation reaction including lowering macrophages infiltration and systemic nonspecific inflammatory response and also restraining gap junction connexins leading to less communication among cells. This study provides new ideas and methods for the prevention and treatment of vascular remodeling.

purpose: This research focused on unstable angina pectoris of Qi-stagnation and blood-stasis coronary heart disease, discussed the feasibility of seeking biological markers associated with the syndrome with literature mining methods. Method: using a combination methods of literature research and the clinical research to mine by literature the specific clinical indicators of the stagnancy of qi and blood-stasis in, then compared with the clinical testing of the indicators. Results: We obtained 67 specific index by literature mining and 10 specific index through clinical testing. Of which 8 index that account for results of clinical tests of 80% were mined by two ways. Conclusion: the literature mining laws as the discovery of syndrome of abnormal biological indicators is an new feasible method, but which precision should be improved, it is recommended that further improvement of the mining algorithm, and to extend it to the studies of other diseases and syndromes to validate its' the applicability and reliability.